The US President is “open” to meeting with Vladimir Putin and President Volodymyr Zelensky in a make or break attempt to end the war in Ukraine.
This comes after Donald Trump said that Russia is an “extraordinary threat” to America and placed 25% of sanctions last week and a further 25% on Wednesday.
On Thursday Putin held talks with Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff in Moscow on Thursday as the US President’s deadline to end the war ends on Friday where Russia will be slapped with secondary sanctions which will affect Russian friendly countries buying oil.
The White House told the BBC that Trump is “open to meeting with both President Putin and President Zelensky.”
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Russia has continually rejected the idea of Putin meeting with Zelensky in a face-to-face.
Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said that a meeting with the Ukrainian President was not “specifically discussed” between Witkoff and Putin.
Ushakov said in a statement, “At the suggestion of the American side, an agreement in principle was made to hold a bilateral meeting at the highest level in the coming days, that is, a meeting between President Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump.
“Now, together with our American colleagues, we are starting to work out the specific parameters of this meeting and the venue. By the way, I will note that the venue has also been agreed upon in principle and we will inform you about it a little later.
“As for the option of a trilateral meeting, which for some reason was mentioned by Washington yesterday, this option was simply mentioned by the American representative during the meeting in the Kremlin. But this option was not specifically discussed.
“The Russian side left this option completely, completely without comment. We propose, first of all, to focus on preparing a bilateral meeting with Trump and we believe that the main thing is for this meeting to be successful and productive.
“Everyone also knows that yesterday, immediately after Witkoff’s report, Trump called a number of leading European partners and discussed this matter with them.
“I will note that we, using the appropriate channels, have already begun informing our closest partners and friends about the issues that were discussed during this meeting with Witkoff.
“Next week was considered as the targeted date [for the meeting], but the parties are starting to directly prepare for this important meeting, and it is difficult to say how many days the preparation will take. But the option of holding the meeting during the next week was considered, and we are quite positive about this option.”
